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The Sower’s way: the path for the future

September 17, 2016

The Sower’s way: the path for the future

Our paper on “The Sower’s Way” has been published in the IOP Environmental Research Letters journal. It is an attempt to quantify the physical limits of the energy transition from fossils to renewables.

The title of the article takes inspiration from a strategy well known to ancient farmers, the fact that they had to save something from their current harvest for the next one; it is the origin of the common saying “don’t eat your seed corn!”

Starting from this ancient wisdom, we performed a quantitative calculation of how much “seed” we need in the form of fossil fuels in order to have enough energy to build a new “harvest” of renewable energy that can replace the old one. All that without emitting so much CO2 that we would go over the 2°C limit and without anyone being left out. 

Of course, it is a calculation that depends on a lot of debatable parameters, but we did our best to remain within realistic consideration, without asking for technological miracles or drastic reductions in the human population. We just assumed current technologies and that the population curve would follow the UN projections. At the same time, we recognize that perpetual growth is a dream that only madmen or economists can think as possible. We assumed that humankind would gradually move toward a stabilization of the economy and of the population on a level of per capita energy sufficient to survive. 

It is possible, here are the main results from the paper

You can see how we assume a rapid growth of renewable energy, built up in the beginning using fossil energy but, in the later stages of the transition relying on renewable energy to continue the process, while phasing out the fossil fuels which are completely abandoned by around 2060. In this scenario, emissions do not go over the COP21 limit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Changing Everything

April 8, 2016

Changing Everything

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Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies, massive demonstrations, legislative fiat or some other strategy, but the goal is generally the same: replace dirty fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. Such a transition is often given a significance that goes well beyond its immediate impact on greenhouse gas emissions: it would somehow make our exploitative relationship to Nature more environmentally sound, our relationship to each other more socially equitable. In part this is because the fossil fuel corporations – symbolized by the villainous Koch brothers – will be a relic of the past, replaced by ‘green’ corporations and entrepreneurs that display none of their predecessors’ ruthlessness and greed.

Maybe, but I have my doubts. Here in Vermont, for example, a renewable energy conference last year was titled, “Creating Prosperity and Opportunity Confronting Climate Change”. The event attracted venture capitalists, asset management companies, lawyers that represent renewable energy developers, and even a “brandthropologist” offering advice on “how to evolve Brand Vermont” in light of the climate crisis. The keynote speaker was Jigar Shah, author of Creating Climate Wealth, who pumped up the assembled crowd by telling them that switching to renewables “represents the largest wealth creation opportunity of our generation.” He added that government has a role in making that opportunity real: “policies that incentivize resource efficiency can mean scalable profits for businesses.”[1] If Shah is correct, the profit motive ­– in less polite company it might be called ‘greed’ – will still be around in a renewable energy future.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

100% Renewable Energy: What We Can Do in 10 Years

February 23, 2016

100% Renewable Energy: What We Can Do in 10 Years

It will take at least three decades to completely leave behind fossil fuels. But we can do it. And the first step is to start with the easy stuff. 
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If our transition to renewable energy is successful, we will achieve savings in the ongoing energy expenditures needed for economic production. We will be rewarded with a quality of life that is acceptable—and, perhaps, preferable to our current one (even though, for most Americans, material consumption will be scaled back from its current unsustainable level). We will have a much more stable climate than would otherwise be the case. And we will see greatly reduced health and environmental impacts from energy production activities.

But the transition will entail costs—not just money and regulation, but also changes in our behavior and expectations. It will probably take at least three or four decades, and will fundamentally change the way we live.

Nobody knows how to accomplish the transition in detail, because this has never been done before. Most previous energy transitions were driven by opportunity, not policy. And they were usually additive, with new energy resources piling onto old ones (we still use firewood, even though we’ve added coal, hydro, oil, natural gas, and nuclear to the mix).

Since the renewable energy revolution will require trading our currently dominant energy sources (fossil fuels) for alternative ones (mostly wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and biomass) that have different characteristics, there are likely to be some hefty challenges along the way.

Therefore, it makes sense to start with the low-hanging fruit and with a plan in place, then revise our plan frequently as we gain practical experience. Several organizations have already formulated plans for transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

IEA in Davos 2016 warns of higher oil prices in a few years’ time

February 9, 2016

IEA in Davos 2016 warns of higher oil prices in a few years’ time

World Economic Forum

The Transformation of Energy

Fig 1: WEF energy panellists

22/1/2016   From right to left: moderator Daniel Yergin (IHS), Fatih Birol (IEA), Hiroaki Nakanishi (Hitachi), Ignacio Sánchez (Iberdrola), Eric Xin Luo (Shunfeng International Clean Energy)

This recent forum was about how to transition away from fossil fuels, after the UN conference on climate change in Paris in November 2015. Moderator Yergin – who is a known peak oil denier – started by asking Fatih Birol what low oil and gas prices mean for the development of renewable energies. Fatih responded by first warning about the impact of lower oil prices on investments in the oil and gas sector:

(video 3:24)
Fatih Birol: “For the oil markets what worries me the most is that: last year we have seen oil investments in 2015 decline more than 20%, compared to 2014, for the new projects. And this was the largest drop we have ever seen in the history of oil. And, moreover, in 2016, this year, with the $30 price environment, we expect an additional 16% decline in the oil projects, investments. So, we have never seen 2 years in a row oil investments declining. If there was a decline 1 year, which was very rare, the next year there was a rebound”

Daniel Yergin: “What does that lead you to?”

Fatih Birol: “this leads me to the very fact that in a few years of time, when the global demand gets a bit stronger, when we see that the high cost areas such as the United States start to decline, we may well see and upward pressure on the prices as a result of market tightness. So my message, my 1st message is: don’t be misled that the low oil prices will have an impact on the oil prices in the market in a few years’ time”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Revolution? More like a crawl

June 1, 2015

Revolution? More like a crawl

The energy visionary Vaclav Smil — Bill Gates’s favorite author — says that when our leaders promise quick energy transformations, they’re getting it very wrong.

America in 2015 finds itself almost in a new energy reality. It recently became the world’s second–largest extractor of crude oil, and since 2010 has been the leading producer of natural gas, whose abundant and inexpensive supply has been accelerating the retreat from coal as a national source of electric power. 

Some see this as the beginning of an even bigger transition, one in which America’s dominant status as a producer of hydrocarbons ends its allies’ dependence on Russian gas and makes OPEC terminally irrelevant, while its entrepreneurial drive helps it quickly advance to harness renewables and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

All of this sounds too good to be true — and it is. Indefensible claims of imminent transformative breakthroughs are an unfortunately chronic ingredient of American energy debates.

When American leaders talk about energy transitions, they tend to sell them as something that can be accomplished in a matter of years. Al Gore, perhaps the country’s most prominent climate activist, proposed to “re-power” America, making its electricity carbon-free, within 10 years, calling the goal “achievable, affordable and transformative.” That was in 2008, when fossil fuels produced 71 percent of American electricity; last year 67 percent still came from burning fossil fuels.

President Barack Obama, who has a strong rhetorical dislike of oil — although kerosene distilled from it fuels the 747 that carries him to play golf in Hawaii — promised in his 2011 State of the Union message that the country would have 1 million electric cars by 2015. That goal was abandoned by the Department of Energy just two years later.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The energy revolution will not be televised

June 1, 2015

The energy revolution will not be televised

Three recent news items remind us that energy transitions take time, a lot of time–far too much time to be shrunk down into a television special, a few talking points, or the next big energy idea.

For example, the complex management task of putting together the international fusion research project called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has resulted in estimated final costs that have tripled since the 2006 launch. Fusion could theoretically offer clean and abundant energy almost indefinitely because it uses ubiquitous hydrogen* as fuel and creates helium in the process. (Water you’ll recall is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom and is therefore the most abundant source of hydrogen.)

Despite nine years of effort, ITER has yet to carry out a single experiment; and, the project is not expected to do so for another four years. The idea for such an international project was hatched in 1985 during a summit between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of what was then still called the Soviet Union. Thirty years later fusion is still receding into the horizon of our energy future.

While there are certainly issues that are managerial rather than merely technical, the technical challenges remain enormous. After decades of experimentation, no laboratory has ever produced more energy from a fusion reaction than it took to create it. One of the most promising tests was performed last year at the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. This test produced about 17 kilojoules which was more energy than was used to create the fuel. Problem is, the lasers that initiated the fusion consumed about 2 megajoules or 118 times the amount of energy created by the test.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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